News from the Jungle

Upcoming Events

10/17 Late Start – School starts at 9:35 am

10/18 Scholastic Book Order Due (online)

10/25 Pumpkin Patch — to volunteer with PTA for this event, click here

10/25 Bingo for Books – 6 pm (check PTA blog for more information

10/26 No School – Y5 and Kindergarten only

10/31 Costume Parade and PBIS celebration

Agenda for the Week

Reading and Writing: We learned the letters E and V and focused on the sound of each letter. The children brainstormed items that begin with each letter and completed activities which helped them find, identify, and write these letters.

The children practiced writer’s workshop and reviewed how to use an imaginary rubber band to help stretch out words, in order to listen to the sounds within each word.  This week the children wrote about a monster. The monster was our noun and the children had to use an adjective to describe the monster. An example is “The monster is purple.” When your child write this sentence it may look like this “m p.” This is telling me that they are hearing the beginning sound of the words. The sentence could look like this “Vu Mnstr is prpl.” This sentence is telling me they are hearing sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of the word.  As you can see, the children knowing their letters and letters sounds is a key component to them being successful writers.  If your child does not know their letters or letter sounds, it is important that you spend an extra 10 minutes per night working on this with them.

This is the video we use in class to help the children understand nouns and adjectives:

We continue to review the parts of a sentence. The children learned about our writer’s checklist during writers workshop and learned that they can edit their own paper to check to make sure they began their sentence with an uppercase letter, they have finger spaces between their words, and they ended their sentence with a period.

Here is a video which promotes letter recognition of uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as, letter sounds.

Please remember to watch the How-To videos which I have made to help your child at home with name practice, letter recognition, and letter sound acquisition.

If your child already has mastered these skills, feel free to watch the sight word video or reading comprehension video to help your child continue their academic growth.

We continued practicing the procedures of Daily 5. The children worked hard at building stamina during our Daily 5 rotations. The children were able to do Read to Self for 15 minutes this week! This was very helpful in providing me time to work in small groups. We also learned how to do our work on writing rotation. Each week the children are gaining more independence in our routines and procedures!

Math: We began our math workshop this week. The children learned the four rotations of math workshop which are M – mathseeds, A – at your seat paper pencil work, T- Teacher’s choice, and H-Hands-on math game. The children loved learning math workshop! We will continue to work through our Eureka math lessons and utilize our math workshop model in conjunction with our new math curriculum to promote number sense.

We have also been counting the days of the school year and have been learning about place value. The children know that the ones place can only go up to 9 before we have to “regroup” into a bunch of ten. We are learning how to count by 10’s when we count our days and then continue counting on by ones from there. For example, “10, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.”

The children also practiced graphing and tally marks this week!

For the tally marks we say, ” 1, 2, 3, 4, number 5 shuts the door. 6, 7, 8, 9, number 10 draws the line.” This helps the children to remember when to make the diagonal line.

At home, please practice writing numbers 1 – 20 with your child. They should be practicing how to recognize these numbers, as well as be able to write them. Counting objects with one-to-one correspondence is another skill you can work on at home. You may do this while you are giving your child a snack. If you give them grapes for a snack, have them count the grapes one at a time, while moving the grapes from one side of the plate to the other side of the plate.

Below are great videos on subitizing that we use in class:

Here are a few math videos to promote number sense at home:

Below are 2D and 3D shape videos:

Science: This week we began discussing the concept of positional words. These are words such as in, out, on, off, below, above, etc.

Social Studies: The children love using our Let’s Find Out Scholastic magazines. We continue to learn about concepts presented in the monthly magazines, as well as continuing to learn about being a good citizen. The children are practicing being a good friend and still working on learning the routines and procedures of the school.

There is a link and code under the “educational websites” tab on our home page to our Let’s Find Out page where you can complete additional activities at home with your child to follow up our learning at school.

Housekeeping Items:

Headphones: If you have not yet sent in a pair of headphones for your child, please do so as soon as possible. We will be getting on the computers in our room each day, and I would like to set up some routines and procedures for the children to follow using their own headphones during technology time. We ask that you send in a pair of headphones because it is more sanitary for all the children and helps to decrease the occurrence of things such as lice, as well as other things.

Winter Apparel: The weather is beginning to turn cold and this means the children will begin needing to wear a coat to school. Sooner, than we would like, the weather will get even colder and the children will need coats, hats, mittens, scarves, boots, etc.

Please work with your child at home on how to independently put on and take off their own fall and winter clothing items. If I have to zip and unzip coats, take off boots and put on sneakers, help children bundle up, etc… it takes away from our learning time. It is not just one child, this task is multiplied by 24 children and multiplied again by arrival, 3 recess times, and dismissal. That is 124 coats, boots, hats, mittens, etc that need to be put on and off each day. I cannot possibly help all of the children with these tasks and still get to all of the objectives we need to accomplish in a day. Please help me by building independence in your child and showing them how to complete these tasks on their own at home. Thank you!

Name Practice

If your child is struggling with writing their name and other letters, it is important that you work with them at home on this skill. We are spending time in class working on these skills, but will be moving on quickly and if your child is struggling to form letters, they will struggle to complete their work. Here is a great resource for handwriting practice: https://www.handwritingworksheets.com/flash/printdots/index.htm

Snack Time

Please be sure to put the snack in a separate place from their lunch. Please show your child where you will put their snack each day in order to foster independence for them. Sometimes, when the snack is packed inside the lunchbox, the children try to eat their whole lunch at snack time. Thank you for your assistance in separating your child’s snack and lunch.

Snacks should be healthy to provide the children with energy for their day. Please send a simple snack such as fruit, vegetables, cheese, and crackers. Please do not send candy as a snack. Juice and milk are not allowed in our classroom. Please do not send any kind of juice box or milk with your child for snack time. The children may have the juice or milk for lunch in the cafeteria.

ALLERGY ALERT: We have nut allergies in our room. Please make sure that you are not sending any snacks which contain any nuts. Our room is NUT FREE!

Folders

Please make sure to empty the folder each night! It is very difficult and time consuming to locate homework or important notes when the folder is full of papers from the day before. Please be sure to send the folder to school each day. It is a big part of our arrival and dismissal routines and the folders help the children keep all of their papers organized.

Change of clothes

Please send in a change of clothes (pants, shirt, underwear, socks) in a gallon bag with their name clearly written on the baggie. My most frequent call home is to ask for parents to bring a change of clothes to school. Even the most disciplined children have accidents at school sometimes. We have so much fun during the day that sometimes the children do not want to stop to use the bathroom when needed. Not only do bathroom accidents happen, but sometimes the playground equipment is wet or the ground is muddy. Having a change of clothes at school makes it easy for me and for you to help your child feel clean and comfortable in the quickest way possible. We will leave the baggie of clothes in their locker at school.